Published: November 24, 2005 - The Advocate Weekly & http://www.advocateweekly.com/When asked to guess their occupations, most people assume Bill Ahern is a truck driver, a mechanic or a plumber and they often, even without invitation, ask his wife, Brenda Ahern, if she is a nurse, because she “looks like a nurse.”
They are half right. Brenda and Bill Ahern are both registered nurses.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, less than 10 percent of the more than two million RNs in this country in 2004 were men. Though strangers are surprised by Bill Ahern’s occupation, their reactions have always been positive. His friends and family, however, sometimes use his profession to give him a hard time. While helping his brother-in-law build his house, he was given the job of pounding 3-inch spikes into the concrete foundation.“I might be a nurse,” he said recently, “but I can pound a nail. I used to build Shaker tables and do basic carpentry, but I hadn’t ever done this before, and I kept bending the spike. One of the other guys yells, “’Hey get the nurse off that job.’”
Although he does not resemble Florence Nightingale in any way, Bill Ahern has worked within the medical community for the past 17 years. He started at Hillcrest’s dietary unit at age 16. After joining the National Guard infantry at age 19, he attended Berkshire Community College part time and continued to work at Hillcrest as a radiology transport aide and darkroom technician, and an operating room orderly, where patients often mistook him for a nurse. He also worked as an anesthesia technician at Crane Center/BMC’s operating room.
When someone first suggested he become a registered nurse, he scoffed at the idea, then realized he had completed all the prerequisite courses necessary to enter the nursing program at BCC.
Recalling his grandfather’s advice to “build on what you know,” and searching for a new challenge, he entered the program. While enrolled in the RN program at BCC full time, he worked at Berkshire Medical Center’s Dialysis Unit as a Reuse Tech and trained as a hemodialysis technician. Once he qualified as a registered nurse, he joined the Dialysis unit at BMC in the Medical Arts Complex in 2001.
Brenda Ahern, on the other hand, did not enter the nursing program until after she married four years ago, but she had considered a nursing career from the time she was a child. When she and her future husband met, she was also taking part-time classes at Berkshire Community College to become a medical assistant, and worked at Lenox’s Yankee Inn and for the advertising department at the Berkshire Eagle. Upon completing her training, she worked at Lee Family Practice as a medical assistant and phlebotomist. In 2000, she joined BMC as a medical assistant at its Neighborhood Health Clinic, while completing her prerequisites for the nursing program at Berkshire Community College. When she was accepted into the RN program, she also worked part time as a unit secretary, at BMC’s Jones-2 and as a nursing assistant in telemetry.
She became a registered nurse in 2004, and said she feels she didn’t choose the profession as much as it chose her.
“I transferred my position to nursing assistant on [Berkshire Medical Center’s] 5 West while going through the nursing program, and I felt comfortable here. It’s an honor to be there with the patients and their families, but it’s tough too,” she said. “Patients have said to me, ’How do you do this? This is a thankless job.’ But when I’m cleaning someone up or helping someone out, I like to think that someone would do it for me – that’s how you get through the hard parts of the job.”
Her husband agreed. His first “hands on” experience as a nurse-in-training was what those in the nursing profession delicately refer to as a “code brown” situation (cleaning up diarrhea). It did not deter him from his goal, however, and he still takes it all in stride.
Recalling a recent experience with a patient who kept apologizing for the situation, he joked, “Well if the shoe was on the other foot, you’d do this for me wouldn’t you? And the guy looked right at me and said, ‘no!’”
Combined with compassion, the Aherns both contend a sense of humor is absolutely necessary not only to connect with their patients and give them the best care, but to maintain the ability to love the job even on the days when they can’t seem to make anyone happy. Perhaps more than most jobs, nursing can be emotionally, mentally and physically draining, but most of the time, the couple can count on each other for support. However, being in the same occupation also has its drawbacks.
“It’s a double-edge sword,” Benda Ahern said. “I feel lucky that we’re both in the same profession because I’ve had nurses say, ‘My husband just doesn’t understand what I do.’ A lot of guys might say, ‘Well, you didn’t do a roof all day,’ but Bill knows how hard it is [to be a nurse] because he does it too.”
On the other hand, there are some days where one of them will want to vent, and the other one wants to forget about it.
“Some days I come home, and she’ll want to talk about it, and I’ll say, ‘Oh yeah? You think your day was bad? Well, listen to this,’” Bill Ahern said.
His wife replied that they occasionally face days that inspire dreams about leaving the profession, buying an inn in Vermont and opening a quilt shop.
In spite of the difficulties, both nurses said they most appreciate the aspects of the job that allow them to interact on a daily basis with a wide variety of people and personalities. Both feel the most important skill in nursing, aside from technical knowledge, is to learn to adapt to every situation, leaving any inclination to make judgments about anything other than a patients’ health and comfort outside the door.
“Every room that you walk into will be a whole different situation, and you have to figure out how to switch from one person to the next,” Brenda Ahern said. “You can’t be judgmental because you can never know why people are the way they are or how they got to this place in their lives.”
When admitted to a healthcare facility, patients may make judgments of their own, of course. Placing faith in the professionals who care for them, they often give up a certain amount of control, not to mention a bit of their dignity. Neither Ahern, however, has ever encountered patient prejudice because of their gender, and both frequently receive compliments about the other’s skills from patients they have in common.
“I’ve seen my husband interact with the patients, and he immediately puts them at ease; he is very gentle, very very patient and very kind,” Brenda Ahern praised.
Based on their experiences personally and professionally, though, both acknowledged their own stereotypical assumptions and expectations, especially about themselves and each other. Bill Ahern believes male doctors relate differently to him than they do to female nurses.
“When a doctor gets upset,” he said, “and yells because something is missed or isn’t done right, I interpret that as “Hey dude, c’mon.’ It motivates me to do a better job, where Brenda would probably take it more personally.
She didn’t disagree, and offered some of her own observations about the male of the species.
“He cut his finger with my manicure scissors while we were on vacation. I told him to be careful. I told him they were really sharp. He should have had stitches, but he wouldn’t go to the hospital. He used duct tape, which he carries with him everywhere we go. He’s a big baby when he gets a cold though.”
Despite, or perhaps due to, the responsibilities of their jobs, the couple said they are more appreciative of each other, and feel free to be as open and honest as the people they care for.
“When you’re seriously ill, you say exactly what you think,” said Brenda Ahern. “It’s freeing in a way. I always tell people, if something hurts, and they need to swear, I’m not offended – whatever they have to do to make themselves feel better, it’s okay.”
The job has changed their perspectives and attitudes about life in general, as well.
“When I’m upset over something like a boat part didn’t come in, and I need to put it on the damn boat, I’ll think about a patient I’m taking care of, and my problem is like nothing,” Bill Ahern said.
His wife added, “I realize that I get to go home and forget about it for awhile and lead my life. But they’re sick and can’t get a reprieve. It makes us more grateful and take things less for granted.”
The Aherns take seriously their roles as the people who assess and report, educate, advocate, and rehabilitate, hold hands and heads, reduce pain, promote healing, clean up, calm down, and provide comfort in even the most uncomfortable of situations. And as experts in their field, they have a unique understanding of nursing’s challenges and problems.
One of the biggest issues with regard to quality care, they said, is not a shortage of people eager to enter the field of nursing, but a lack of qualified nursing teachers and nurses available to give clinical instruction.
And although they have been discouraged at times, they are both grateful to have made it through the “fear phase” of nursing, where they began to believe they had the symptoms of every illness they studied; and the “honeymoon phase” of nursing when they believed perfection was possible. And they try to take care of themselves and abstain from becoming cynical about the illnesses they see all around them.
“People educate themselves more about buying a car than [they do] about their own health,” Bill Ahern said.
Brenda Ahern agreed. “Doctors aren’t God. Don’t be afraid to say, ‘explain that further’ or ‘I want a second opinion.’ The patients’ participation in overall heath care would help immensely.”
But leave the duct taping to the professionals.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment